TRENDING

A workstation broadens the Desktop V mix

By Paul Constance, Florence Olsen

May 13, 1996

With the award this month of the Desktop V contracts to Hughes Data Systems Inc. and Zenith Data Systems, the Air Force appears to have succeeded in stretching the customary definition of the PC requirements buy.

Hughes will supply a 64-bit reduced-instruction-set-computing workstation and not a PC for its high-end desktop system. E.O. Knowles, president of Hughes Data Systems, told GCN his company bid a 166-MHz AlphaStation 200 4/166 from Digital Equipment Corp. for advanced users.

Knowles said the AlphaStation is virtually identical to the machine Hughes bid as the low-end workstation on Air Force Workstations, a $956 million contract awarded in March [GCN, April 1, Page 1]. Hughes shared that award with Sun Microsystems Inc.

Officials at ZDS declined to comment on their Desktop V products until the bid protest period ends late this week or early next week. Rumor on the street is that a protest is likely from one or more of the unsuccessful bidders, though none would say last week that they would file for review of the award.

The Air Force predicts that Hughes and Zenith will sell as many as 360,000 desktop and portable computers through the multibillion-dollar Desktop V program. Hughes won a $924 million contract, Zenith a $1 billion contract.

Meanwhile, a third award for Desktop V is set for July through a separate competition limited to companies participating in the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program for small, disadvantaged businesses.

The three contractors will then compete for orders from the Air Force and other civilian and military agencies. For the first time, the Army and Navy are barred from buying goods through the Desktop contracts.

In addition to computers and servers that run Microsoft Windows NT, Desktop V will deliver peripherals and a wide variety of applications.

ZDS, which was acquired by Packard Bell Electronics in April, has won four of the Air Force's five desktop procurements. The company shared the Desktop IV contract with GTSI. About 348,000 PCs, plus software and peripherals, were sold under Desktop IV by the time it expired Feb. 1.

Demand for PCs on Desktop IV was intense: The contract exhausted its 300,000-system limit a full 10 months before its expiration date. Under an extension to the delegation of procurement authority, Air Force customers bought an additional 48,000 PCs last winter.

Air Force sources said Desktop IV has racked up $997 million in sales to date, a figure that probably will increase because software and peripheral sales on the contract will continue through 1998.

Award of Desktop V first was scheduled for January 1995. Delays in producing a final request for proposals first pushed it back by a year. Then fierce competition from a field of seasoned PC vendors ultimately forced the Air Force to hold discussions, delaying the award another five months. The Standard Systems Group initially had hoped to award Desktop V without discussions [GCN, July 3, 1995, Page 3].

"This award is the result of a lot of hard work a lot of people," said Lt. Col. J.D. Smith, the Desktop V program manager in Montgomery. More than 30 full-time employees worked on the massive buy.

"Customers are going to very pleased when they see what's available on the contract," Smith said. "It's a very good deal for the Air Force and other government customers." VZDS manufactured its Desktop IV PCs at a facility in St. Joseph, Mich. Now that it is part of Packard Bell, ZDS will close that facility and probably move manufacturing to a new Packard Bell plant in Sacramento, Calif. In a statement, ZDS said federal contracting officers must review and approve any changes in its manufacturing and distribution operations.

Some observers had predicted that a RISC computer would show up on Desktop V. For the advanced desktop system, bidders had to offer a computer that scored at least 2,500 on the SPECint92 benchmark and could be upgraded to 3,900. Other PCs on both Hughes and ZDS's bids are expected to be based on Intel Corp.'s Pentium processor.